Timeline for Concern about lesser attention towards relatively advanced questions
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
27 events
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| Jan 1, 2014 at 18:59 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackMath/status/418456417772011520 | ||
| Dec 10, 2013 at 21:24 | comment | added | user2055 | I have since tried for a few days the method of @PostNoBills by filtering questions by votes. For the tags like abstract algebra and tags that are not specifically elementary, it seems to work pretty well and filtering out basic questions, whatever that means. So while it is not perfect, it is certainly an upgrade to looking at the unanswered tab, and gives me a fresh supply of nice questions to look at. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 18:23 | comment | added | Bruno Stonek | I'm glad someone put this discussion on the table. I have been worrying about this for a long time now. | |
| Dec 10, 2013 at 18:03 | answer | added | user7530 | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 8, 2013 at 16:34 | answer | added | Ron Gordon | timeline score: 4 | |
| Dec 8, 2013 at 9:12 | comment | added | Alex Youcis | I agree with your analysis. When I got on math.se I often check the front page, and perhaps one of the tags. If I see nothing of interest I often times log off. Even more aggressive tag searching seems futile since people often times (confusingly I may add) tag questions with seemingly random, obscure things. | |
| Dec 8, 2013 at 7:13 | answer | added | user21820 | timeline score: -3 | |
| Dec 8, 2013 at 5:55 | comment | added | Brian M. Scott | @Jason: It’s worth experimenting, but I don’t know how useful the number of votes is: some of us upvote questions for displaying some reasonable (not necessarily correct) thought, independent of the nature or level of the mathematics involved. I’ve also seen interesting near-research-level questions downvoted, sometimes even below $0$, apparently because they were badly formatted and not accompanied by any indication of the asker’s thoughts. | |
| Dec 8, 2013 at 1:25 | answer | added | Brian Rushton | timeline score: 0 | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 21:43 | comment | added | user2055 | @PostNoBills: Most interesting! I did not know the search had these features. Thank you! | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 21:42 | comment | added | Post No Bulls |
@JasonPolak You can bookmark a search query for that purpose. For example, this one shows the newest questions with the score of at least three and with no answers yet. Those may be more interesting to look at. One can tweak this in many ways, e.g., allowing for at most one answer (answers:0-1) but not an accepted answer (hasaccepted:no).
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| Dec 7, 2013 at 21:22 | comment | added | user2055 | @JyrkiLahtonen: Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I do this already. The current tag system is nearly useless for this because there is no way to filter levels in any given tag - for instance, abstract-algebra contains fairly obvious and cliche-type questions and very well-thought out questions and there is little ways to filter out between the two (for instance, #of votes might be one way but there is no way to hide all questions with less than X votes). I don't want to filter out by subject anyhow, only by some crude measure of level. | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 19:20 | comment | added | Brian M. Scott | @Asaf: That’s why I specified the areas in which my experience was relevant; I really don’t know about some other areas. My impression extends to some areas of peripheral interest to me — functional analysis and parts of algebra — but I’m not confident that I see enough there to judge, and I know that there are large areas that I don’t see at all. | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 17:42 | answer | added | Post No Bulls | timeline score: 12 | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 12:01 | comment | added | Aiden | Well, I think there might also be some concerns about the extensive attentions to questions completely irrelevant to math...... | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 11:32 | answer | added | azimut | timeline score: 27 | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 9:53 | comment | added | azimut | My personal experience and big sentiment is that yes, the level of Math.SE is falling. It would be great if "relatively advanced but not research level questions" get the same attention as it used to be when I started here and fell in love with Math.SE quickly. My impression is that currently, those advanced questions are competing with a flood of cheap questions dragging the attention of many active members to the much higher reputation gain they promise. In my opinion, to improve the situation, the reputation gain must somehow be reversed to give more advanced questions a higher expectation. | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 9:19 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | @Brian: I also feel that way about set theory ans general topology questions. But you have to remember that we have a handful of fanatic users (you and me amongst them) that really do their best to give good answers as soon as possible. It's not necessarily the case for most tags. | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 8:48 | comment | added | Ellie K |
@JyrkiLahtonen You are correct, I believe, about this A better remedy would be to try and recruit more advanced undergrads and beginning grad students. And also boot out those freshmen who don't take math seriously. That is the best solution, but it cannot be implemented programmatically within the StackExchange platform. It is the only approach that will effectively address the problem without unintended repercussions. To OP: You are correct too, in your observation. I am sorry that I cannot think of any answer that improves upon what Jyrki said.
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| Dec 7, 2013 at 8:10 | comment | added | Jyrki Lahtonen | I'm in favor of the sentiment of this suggestion. I'm not so sure about the suggested remedy though. Giving people points for voting may have the opposite from intended effect in that it will further widen the gap of points earned from advanced as opposed to elementary questions. A better remedy would be to try and recruit more advanced undergrads and beginning grad students. And also boot out those freshmen who don't take math seriously. | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 8:06 | comment | added | Jyrki Lahtonen |
@JasonPolak: The following two setp method may improve your daily experience. 1) On the front page side bar you see headings like Favorite tags and Ignored tags. You can add all the tags you have zero interest in to the Ignored list. 2) Then you should go to your personal profile page. Click preferences. Scroll down, and check the box Hide ignored tags. Without step 2) the questions with ignored tags will simply be greyed out. With step 2) in place they get filtered out from the list of questions that you see altogether.
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| Dec 7, 2013 at 4:11 | comment | added | user90041 | @PeterLeFanuLumsdaine I agree with your point, tags may be a better way to implement this. | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 0:49 | comment | added | Brian M. Scott | My experience doesn’t really support your hypothesis: my impression is that in general topology and set theory such questions are getting about as much attention as they did two years ago, and probably in combinatorics as well. | |
| Dec 7, 2013 at 0:11 | comment | added | user2055 | I am probably interested in 0.5% of all the questions on this site, but I really want to see these questions. I wish there was a way to filter out the seemingly innumerable amount of basic homework undergrad type questions, but I have yet to find a way to do this. I feel like even a crude subjective tagging system would be better than the current state of things :( | |
| Dec 6, 2013 at 23:20 | comment | added | Jay | I once got a message that I was voting on answers but I should consider voting on more questions. (approximate wording) Perhaps there could be notices of people selecting favorite questions within our favorite tags. | |
| Dec 6, 2013 at 22:45 | comment | added | Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine | If people agree that such a stratification is needed, it seems like the simplest way to implement it would be via tags (e.g. a tag “advanced-level”, or “undergraduate-level”, or similar). However, I have a vague recollection of a discussion of such a system in the past, rejecting the idea on grounds that it would be too subjective and difficult to give guidelines for. | |
| Dec 6, 2013 at 19:16 | history | asked | user90041 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |